Braided Loosely
by BrokePerception
Summary: Set after 3.07 Thirteen. Clarke takes a chance to say goodbye.
**Author's Note: I'm still absolutely devastated after Lexa's death. I can't get over the way they ended the Clexa love before it truly began. I was compelled to write this in a strange way, was a bit obsessed with my phone and with my laptop from the first word that I put down up until the very last. I know I am usually a lot pickier with my words. I rewrite and edit, pick at my stories with a fine-toothed comb to reassure my OCD that I did all I could to create a great piece. This time, I didn't. I will rewrite it, one day, will sift through my words and let my OCD take control. Right now, though, I felt the need to put this up as it was, before episode 3.08 releases, and in as rough a way as I felt when I wrote it. I have limited time to rewrite, now, and I felt like maybe the heartache I tried to include in this will come across only better if I post it in its very first, straight-from-the-flow-of-my-eager-fingers version.**

 **Reviews are welcome, always.**

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Clarke followed Titus in silence as he carried her lover in his arms towards a section of the Commander's Tower where she had never been. With a pang of hurt, she realized she hadn't seen most of it and that Lexa would never manage to show her every nook and corner as she had promised. She didn't look at where she was going as she followed Titus blindly into the depths of the building, her pain clawing at her in such a way that she couldn't bring up the mindset to remember or snap from it all until he turned with her in his arms and pushed open a hidden door with his back, bringing Lexa and her into it.

Looking around her, she saw innumerous candles lit around every surface in the room, and despite the fact that it looked like this room wasn't used often, there was not a blotch of dust or dirt to be found. She suspected that it was well kept and that the candles were lit at all times. Her eyes only fell upon the tall, white marble altar of sorts that stood in the middle of the room as Titus placed the Commander's lifeless body upon it in a loving way that made Clarke believe that he had cared a lot about her, even if he hadn't always shown her in as obvious a way.

The blonde watched as the bald man looked upon the dead girl's face for several seconds before he straightened up and turned back to find her standing there. If he was surprised to see her there, he didn't show it. There was something in the set of his jaw that told her that he didn't think she belonged there.

As he looked upon the tear-streaked face of the young woman before him and followed the line of her body towards her hands, the hands that she had used to try to save Heda with and that carried her black blood still glistening and contrasting against the pale skin, he couldn't bring himself to snap at her the way he had intended to when he first saw her in the sacred room, though. He quelched the feelings of guilt that threatened to envelop him. For so long he had thought that Lexa's feelings had not been reciprocated and that she was losing herself in something endless and unsatisfactory. Seeing the blonde slip into his Commander's room the night before and being well aware what they must be up to when she didn't emerge until morn, he had lost it, had seen it as that one step too far into making his Heda lose her mind, using her, abusing her. Then when he saw Clarke's face and the pain that swam in her eyes, honest and un-faked pain, he knew that he had been mistaken and that he had been blind. The sky girl had loved Lexa. Maybe what they had shared had not been as a ways to use the darker-haired girl who lay dead upon the altar between them now.

"Why did you bring her here?" Clarke spoken in a broken voice as she nodded her chin at Lexa's lifeless body.

Titus folded his hands before him and bowed his head. "When the Commander of the Twelve Clans dies, a cleaning ritual is performed on her. For three days, the leaders of the clans as well as the general public will get a chance to pay their respects to her before she goes through the burning ritual," he spoke. "Three days is long enough for the Commander's spirit to choose its successor, or it should be."

Clarke nodding to show him that she understood even if he refused to meet her eye. She swallowed hard then and asked, "Who performs the cleaning ritual and what does it entail?" For one reason or another, despite the fact that she was gone, she felt the need to know exactly what was going to happen to her.

"It is the task of the person closest to her," he said. "With this Heda, it will be my task to clean her body and dress her in her formal dress, as well as braid her hair in the simplest way possible to transcend into her afterlife and reincarnation."

A voice screamed inside Clarke's head as she listened to him speak. Anger boiled inside her fast. The thought of Titus touching her any more than he already had made her want to start at him and fly at his throat. It had been his stray bullet that had killed her. It was only the knowledge that harming him would not bring her back that stopped her from acting, that as well as the fact that if she did, she would return to the basic principle of revenge, the Jus Drain Jus Draun Lexa had wanted to change and had died trying for.

She couldn't bear the thought of him or anyone else touching her anymore, though, even if she was gone. Clarke Griffin did not believe in an afterlife or in reincarnation, and even if it existed, she had loved all of Lexa as she was, this body and this soul. With a flash, she saw the way that Titus had pulled the small plated object with the infinity symbol from the top of Lexa's spine again. She pushed past the question that burned in the back of her head: how much of the Commander had been truly Lexa and how much the object Murphy had labelled as an AI?

"Please, let me," Clarke pleaded. She knew that Titus would never agree to it, for she was not even Trikru or accepted as a real part of the coalition, but she could at least fight for what she felt to be her right, given how much she had loved and still did love Lexa, to say goodbye in a dignified way.

The bald man's mouth opened before he raised his head to look at her in offense, to ask her who the hell she thought she was to even suggest this, and that it was not possible, but as soon as he opened his mouth, his mind filled with Heda's last moments: the way she had reached for the wound he had, however accidentally, created in her stomach and the way she had turned her head to look at Clarke before she fell to her knees – to Clarke, not him. Then her last words filtered through his mind and stilled the words he had meant to speak. She had loved her above everything, above Costia. As his clear eyes fell upon the blonde, he knew that even if he couldn't measure her love to Lexa's, she loved her as well. So, instead of the whirlwind of angry words that had threatened to stream from his mouth, he nodded at her once to convey that he would let her have her request. "Heda would want it that way," he spoke.

To say that Clarke was shocked was an understatement. She never would have imagined for Titus to allow her to do this for their Commander. As her blue eyes raved over the man's face, he suddenly seemed a thousand years older in the candle light than he had when she left Lexa's room and he had meant to kill her, to protect the woman he had ended up killing instead. It was bitter sweet, really, but she didn't feel the sweetness of it at the moment. She opened her mouth to ask exactly what was expected of her, when Titus held up a hand.

"Do not see this as more than what it really is. I promised Heda before she died never to try to harm you again, and I know that she would want for you to complete the ritual if you asked for it – which you did," he said. "That and that alone is the reason why. My loyalty to Heda is more important than my dislike for the decisions she made because of you. I will have one of the servants bring up what you need to wash and clothe her."

He held her gaze just a second longer before he promptly turned on his heel and made to leave the way they had entered. Clarke felt a mixture of emotions run through her as he did, after the words he had spoken. She felt gratefulness that he could put his dislike for her aside enough to draw on his loyalty for Lexa, that he would let her do this and think of what Lexa would have wanted. She felt anger at his honesty, really, and at his guts to speak the words he had when she had the blood of her lover on her hands and the woman she had loved more than she could ever even remember loving anyone lay dead between them. She felt sorry for him in a way as well, for she knew he never would have meant to hurt Lexa, and his hatred for her had made him kill his own Commander, however indirectly.

"Thank you," she spoke just loud enough for him to hear as she heard the tell-tale creak of an old door being opened. The door only fell shut several seconds later, and she knew he must have heard and he must have stood there long enough to process the words and what they meant.

As Clarke blinked back towards the lifeless woman on the cold altar before her, she wondered to herself if it was what Lexa would have wanted. She had always been harsh about the idea of death and how Clarke should cope with hers if it came. She might see her need to do this as a ways of saying goodbye, for herself as well as for Lexa, as a form of weakness. The Lexa she had known before the mountain fell would have thought so, at least. Then again, she thought to herself as she slowly walked closer to the altar where Lexa lay, had things not changed drastically since then? Had things not changed drastically since the night they had shared together?

She swallowed against the dryness in her throat as she halted by the altar and looked at Lexa's face. Unconsciously holding her breath, she reached for Lexa's cheek with a shaky hand, but it halted inches away from her skin for a few seconds before she managed to convince herself that it was all right, her fingertips falling on soft skin that would never flush with a blush anymore in the heat of the moment. As she stroked her fingertips along her firm jawline, she thought of all the things she would never experience anymore.

She would never see the smile upon those full lips anymore.

She would never kiss them anymore.

She would never hear that slightly hoarse voice speak to her anymore, not in Trigedasleng or in that subtly accented English. Clarke's eyes shot full of tears as she realized she would never hear the Commander's whispered pleas for her love in the shell of her ear anymore, or hear the way her breath caught in her throat when she was unable to speak at the height of her pleasure, or the way she panted hard and fast and loud when Clarke brought her to the precipice.

She would never look in those beautiful green eyes anymore, to find reassurance or whatever else she had needed and always found there.

That intense green gaze would never stare back at her.

She would never recognize her feelings anymore in Lexa's eyes: the fear or anger, the love or hate. Never again with she see the way her eyes became smoldering emerald, her pupils deep dark pools of love and lust.

Leaving Lexa's skin for a second to move her hand over her eyes, she traced the soft and tender eyelids that would never open anymore. Her eyes moved on to the long dark hair that she had so enjoyed tightening her hands in as they made love. It had been entirely down for her that night, and she had looked so fucking beautiful. She would be eternally beautiful now, Clarke thought. An ache in her soul reminded her of the fact that she would have still looked beautiful in sixty years, but she would never see the proof of it. They would never grow old together.

Ripping her gaze away from that soft, almost peaceful face, Clarke cast her eyes upon the gash in her stomach, partially hidden by her arms and hands loosely draped across her torso. They had never talked about growing old together. They had never talked about a them or a future between them, but now they never would either. She would never know if one day the subject would have come to the conversation and they could have planned a life together. Somehow, somewhere, in the way Lexa had looked at her in the heat of the moment the night before, Clarke believed that they would have had that conversation at one point, after Pike had been taken down and after all of the troubles at hand had been cleared, and that probably hurt the most.

Gently reaching for the bloody hand that lay on top of its counterpart, Clarke Griffin picked up the Commander's lifeless hand – the same hand that had not at all been lifeless the night before and that had touched her with such meticulousness and tenderness, an edge of danger and of harshness as its short but well-kept nails dug in the skin of her back. They had made love, and they had fucked. They had shared a passion she had never thought to be possible between two people, let alone two people so different from each other, with such different backgrounds.

The hand that lay within hers was limp and unmoving, unlike the Lexa she had known and fallen in love with, and the unfairness at how short their love had lasted made her so angry. Squeezing the hand of the woman she loved more than anything in the world and receiving no response from her as she had the night before, whether in a squeeze back or another touch or a laugh or a smile, she felt more empty inside than she ever had, and she leant her back and looked up at the dark ceiling and released a scream as loud as she ever had as all of the loss and pain washed over her, enveloped her.

The sound of her wail echoed into the sacred room long after she had emptied her lungs in it. No matter how loud or how broken it sounded in its echo, it didn't even begin to cover the pain she felt digging within and cutting at the deepest of her soul.

Letting go of Lexa's hand and placing it carefully beside the brunette's limp body, a bit of a distance away from it, Clarke put both of her hands flat on the altar's cool surface and pushed herself up enough so that she could place a knee on the edge and heave herself entirely up. She was as if in a trance as she moved to lay down on her side slowly beside the lifeless shape of the Commander, sliding as close to her as she had the night before, placing her head on the darker-haired girl's breasts and laying her arm across her. Tears began to fall down from her eyes as she was confronted with the lack of Lexa's heartbeat. The night before, it had thumped steadily and rhythmically, faster shortly after their lovemaking and more slowly come morn as they woke, happily encased in each other's arms. It hadn't lasted long at all. She remembered feeling so warm and unworried, remembered she could wake up like that more often in the future, when all of the mess was over. She never would, she realized as tears turned into wailing sobs of loss and heartache as the loss of her soul mate ripped her apart inside.

She was shaken from her heaving sobs as she heard the door fall shut. Blinking and forcing herself to lift her head up from Lexa's chest, she directed her gaze towards the door and saw that a small, colorful bowl on top of clean towels had been placed by the entrance, as well as a neat stack of Lexa's best clothes right beside it. Whoever had had the misfortune to have to bring these items to the room and to find her like this, curled up beside the dead Commander as sadness wreaked havoc on her and she let it overcome her, must have turned right back without a word, probably taken aback by her display of what she assumed they saw as insanity.

Insanity was probably the cause of the loss she felt at having to leave the side of the deceased Commander of the Twelve Clans. Sanity and the shred of a rational mind that she had left were what brought her to a sitting position from which she swung her legs over the edge of the altar and slide down on the floor again. It had to happen. She had pleaded with Titus to be given the chance to do this for Lexa herself, not him, and she owed it to his leniency as well as Lexa and her memory to do right by her, dead or alive.

The blonde's legs shook with the feebleness she felt in her entire body as she made her way over to the items placed there for her to use for the task at hand. Everything seemed to remind her of what she would miss from that day onward, it felt as her eyes fell on the stack of clothes that looked familiar. She didn't need to pick it up to know it was the dress she had worn with the Sky People's initiation as the Thirteen Clan and Clarke's as their Ambassador. She had looked so beautiful then. Never again would she feel her own breath be taken away at the sight of the beautiful young woman who made her heart sing.

Taking a deep breath and raising a hand to her face, using the back of it to wipe across her face, specifically her stinging eyes, she told herself that she owed this to Lexa again. Only with that thought in her mind was it that she managed to bend over and slide both hands under the stack of towels that supported the bowl of slightly steaming, odiferous water, carefully balancing the water bowl on top of the cloth as she straightened and carried both to the altar, placing them at the foot of the big marble stone.

The blonde released a deep sigh of defeat as her eyes travelled back to the woman she had not been able to save. Maybe her mother would have been able to. Deep down, she knew that Abby wouldn't have managed to save her either, but she was too overcome with pain and guilt that she was unable to admit that to herself yet. After all, she was the reason why Lexa had been killed. If it hadn't been for her, Lexa would have still been alive.

She felt the tears well up again. "Fuck," she mouthed to herself at her powerlessness in resisting the heartache wrecking her, finding its way from her body in the ways she couldn't control. She was angry with herself for feeling, for not just being able to push past it and do what she had to do without being halted by emotions Lexa had once warned her for. She cursed because of the fact that in an ideal world she would never have had to do this, too. Lexa was too young to die, too beautiful, too righteous, too important, too loved, too wanted and too needed. What would she do without her? The only way that she could bring herself to continue was by blocking any moving forward from her mind and focusing on the task at hand.

She extended her hands then and took hold of the cloth that covered her upper body. Moving down her body, she untied her clothes as slowly and carefully as she could: a stark contrast with how hurried and needily they had separated from her skin the day before. She tried not to think about it, and that is the only way she got through it. Her jawline tightened as she forced the memories from her mind, of the way she had tried to untie Lexa's bodice, forcing her hand between the brunette and the bed, the latter squishing her movement too much for her to be productive, of the way Lexa had accidentally kicked her in the thigh while trying to be cooperative when Clarke took her pants off of her and how they had laughed at their own clumsiness. She felt like she would never laugh again.

She didn't know how long she had laid there by Lexa's side until they came to bring the water and towels and the clothes, nor did she have any idea of how much time was passing by as she shed the Commander from her attires as diligently as possible. She didn't really care. As she revealed more of the woman before her, she thought of how she had woken up in the middle of the night for a moment and how she had pulled the sheet up higher on Lexa's body upon seeing it puddled at her waistline. The brunette had answered with her eyes still closed that she was not cold, and Clarke had smiled in the night at the alertness and stubbornness that made up a big part of Lexa's personality and perhaps her role as the Commander. She couldn't believe Lexa to have been entirely different before she became Commander, but then again, she never had known her before and as such never would be able to say how much of her was truly her and how much the AI. What role had that chip played in Lexa's being, in their love? She would never know.

Lexa would never be cold or warm again. It was at this thought that she realized that she was not cold or warm either. Part of her just felt numb. She wished she felt numb on the inside as well. She almost wished she didn't feel this pain, but then again, maybe she owed Lexa's memory this amount of heartache and loss she felt if she had truly loved her, and she had. She had so much, and part of her would never stop for as long as she lived. How do you overcome a love that is so deep it flows through your every vein?

Depositing the blood-stained clothes one by one on the far end of the altar carefully, Clarke pulled every last article of clothing from the deceased Commander's body. It was when she lay the last article of clothing on the pile beside her and the woman before her was left entirely bare that she let her eye fall on the deep gushing wound where the bullet had entered her body again. How was it that she had managed to save her from a raging bear but not from a weapon from her own people?

It was as she turned her head to locate where she had put the bowl and the towels again that a small, silvery object surrounded by darkness caught the corner of her eye and made her look back. Squinting, she saw the source and saw the bullet lodged into her aorta, surrounded and partially hidden from view by her black blood. What were the odds for it to hit the major life-sustaining vein in her body, right? It didn't seem right to Clarke that a woman who had survived so many battles would die from something so stupidly accidental. No play writer would ever dare to think of including it in their story for its sheer banality.

She debated for several seconds before reaching over. Her fingers slipped off of the crushed metal a few times before she managed to grasp the foreign object and extract it from where it didn't belong. As she dropped it in the open palm of her other hand, Clarke eyed the bullet closely. She felt the strange need to keep this with her for as long as she lived: the reason why she would never have a happily ever after with Lexa. At the same time, she wanted nothing to do with it. She debated for several moments before deciding, picking it up from her palm again and looking at it hard and closely one last time before raising her hand and throwing it away in the vicinity of the sacred room with all the strengths she could muster. She watched how it smashed into a tall white candle on a ledge in the stone wall and how the candle fell over and rolled down onto the floor, its flame brightening and growing for all of two seconds before it died down... just like Lexa's life, Clarke realized. She had shone brightly and beautifully, perhaps most just before her death, before the fire within her had been forced to die by another's hand.

Swallowing hard, she ripped her eyes away from one died flame to another. She wished she had seen the light Lexa was burn longer. If they had not been such completely different people, if they had met sooner in life, they might have had years together. If it hadn't been for the way they had met, Lexa would have still been alive.

Shaking her head, she willed those thoughts away and turned towards the bowl of damp water at the foot of the altar. Lifting the bowl off of the towels and placing it beside them, she carefully took the top one and shook it loose from its folds, revealing its tiny size that was right for its purpose. Grabbing the towel, she dipped it into the odiferous liquid with one finger and turned towards Lexa. Whereas she felt like perhaps she should clean the wound area first as she would if treating it with her still alive and working her way towards areas of her that needed less cleaning, she also felt the strange desire to wash her the way she would had she still been alive.

They would never bathe together. They would never stand under a stream of water and kiss in the rain like they described it in the romance novels Clarke had read years ago already.

She had lost so much with losing Lexa. She had lost the hope for all of those things she had dreamed of, the things she had thought might just happen to her as well the day her lips first touched Lexa's. Never this. Never that. It was an unbearable burden on her chest, that knowledge. She eventually decided on washing her the way she would have if that morning had never happened and gently began to swipe the damp cloth across the Commander's forehead, her nose...

The fact that she came across flecks and stains of blood on her way across the surface of Lexa's soft skin killed her inside a little more each time. Cleansing her one last time didn't help her. It didn't mend her. It didn't calm her. It didn't make it hurt any less. She worked methodically and trance-like. The tears that still glazed in those blue eyes the entire time didn't fall down, but that didn't take away from the fact that it hurt her more, being confronted with the fact that this time would be the last time she could touch Lexa like this.

Every now and then, she would dip her finger in the water again to refresh it. After cleaning her stomach area inch by inch, her cloth was stained with dark blood and she was forced to drop it on top of the clothes she had shed from her and take a second. It was methodical and practical. It broke her inside. She might appear calm on the exterior, all right and accepting with the situation, but the truth was that she never would or could be. The only reason why she managed to do this was by forcing herself to draw on her last bit of strength and sanity for the sake of Lexa's memory.

The last time she would slide across those firm yet feminine hands and fingers.

The last time she would trace the tattoos on her arm and her back.

Rolling her on her side was hard in one way because of her limpness, but it was easy in another, for she had been so slender despite well-set and strong. As she gently pushed her long dark hair aside and revealed the infinity symbol across and underneath the cut Titus had made, a flashback of the way the chip had reacted when he pulled it from her, as if it was retracting its tiny, squiggling roots, crossed her mind. She stayed a little longer at that part of her, wonder at what exactly the chip contained and how it worked filling her. Somehow, somewhere, she thought she should get her hands on the chip, for it would be the key to answers she didn't know she needed.

When the Commander's body was cleansed in as proper a way as Clarke could muster, she threw the second dirty cloth in the by then cold water in the bowl, picking up the one she had deposited on the clothes Lexa had worn when she died as she did and making it join the first, and pushed the colorful porcelain pot aside. She made for the dress that had been delivered to the sacred room when she had laid beside the Heda on the altar. If anything, she knew that Lexa would look beautiful for her people when they came to say goodbye.

Doing this had not been a goodbye to Clarke necessarily, because that seemed to imply that she could let go, and she doubted if she ever would or could. Nonetheless, it had been necessary to her and maybe to Lexa as well, even if she wasn't there anymore. Anyone else hadn't felt right to do it, no matter what. She had to have been the one to cleanse her that last time.

Her last braid would be a loose one over her unblemished left shoulder.

By the time Titus came to find her, the sun had gone down again, and she lay beside Heda on the altar, holding the hand of the woman who would never hold hers again. Her job was completed, her heart too much of a big gaping hole that resembled the wound he had caused in Lexa's stomach for her to wake up again after laying her head down on the Commander's un-beating heart. Maybe she had loved her as much as Heda had loved her. Titus' guilt had never been bigger.


End file.
